www.ItsNotMental.com Children whose brain is affected by medical/biomedical, neurobiological, metabolic, functional problems, although not of a psychological/emotional origin, may still be diagnosed as what society euphemistically refers to as "mental illness."
Isn't it time to start calling those illnesses what they really are--ILLNESS--same as any other? (Español)

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Saturday, December 8, 2007

Is Schizophrenia a “Psychotic Disorder”?

Some researchers say that the “mental” illness called “schizophrenia” or “schizoaffective” might not really be a “psychotic disorder” since even after treating the psychosis, the person is generally left with severe impairments in function.
It has been proposed (by Henry A. Nasrallah, MD and other schizophrenia researchers) that schizophrenia might better be classified as a neurodevelopmental/neurodegenerative disorder characterized by a deficit syndrome and cognitive dysfunction, with intermittent secondary psychotic episodes [1] rather than as a "mental" illness, or a "psychotic disorder".

An example of a "neurodevelopmental" label is "autism". It is also an example of an underused term -- neurobiological (brain) disorder which includes Tourette syndrome as well. An example of "neurodegenerative" is "Huntington's" or "Alzheimer's".

But there seems to be a multitude of illnesses getting lumped into the diagnosis of “schizophrenia”, as long as the medical causes are not known. There may indeed be people manifesting symptoms of psychosis due to some emotional problems. I certainly cannot make that judgment call. But as it is, very little goes into the very many physical reasons for psychosis, while a huge industry revolves around "mental".

Some of these are due to problems in mitochondria [2] some are strange complex genetic disorders, the baby’s own genes influencing it’s wiring en-utero[3] or the mother’s immune response to flu or other infections while pregnant[4] or even stress responses influencing the wiring of the developing baby’s brain[5] and many are other physical illnesses that could have been diagnosed if only they had been tested for[6].

All those medical illnesses can cause psychotic symptoms yet they are not called "psychotic disorders". If schizophrenia might not be a "psychotic disorder" either, than It does leave one to wonder what exactly IS a "psychotic disorder"?

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